Ute is far from legal and driving it on the street is risky at best with extreme consequences possible.A track day with rare parameters is 2 weeks out, and rather than FreeEMS the Volvo for the road trip, the majority have asked that I take the ute to it.

Currently it's stuck behind the hotel in the corner. That has to change soon, though, as the caravan must make way for a new toy in about a week. So the A-frame will be coming out of storage and being put to some good use! :-D

Probably should have read up on this before I designed and built this, but I think all is not lost despite not having been prepared. Galvanising.

Three areas of concern in this thing:

Seal welded overlapping surface in the hinge bars, though this is well under the 10,000 sq mm min for venting

Sealed cross member section 35x35 box

Area around welded in hinge bars, definitely has some hollow areas, but probably all drain very well naturally

Two seal welded overlapping surfaces between box and hitch mounting plate, see next post (EDIT)

For the former, I just measured and this is the result: 40x40x16 bar with a trapezoid with 85mm sides, which would worst case be 85x85=7225 sq mm, but is much less. Thanks to wikipedia, I know that it's 40x85=3400 sq mm, a third of the threshold for venting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombus#Area

The sealed box needs to be unsealed 4x or more. 35x35 = diagnoal of 49.5mm, drain holes must be minimum of 1/4 of that, so drain holes must be 12.5mm or greater. I have a 15mm bit that exceeds that. Vent holes must be 10mm or greater. I'll talk to the galvanisers first and see what they have to say. 10mm will be my preference, but I'll accept larger if they want it.

I might do a little cosmetic/weight saving/shin saving work on this this weekend, too, ie, cut the corners each side of the coupling at 45* and cut the box section end underneath at 45*, and maybe drill another shackle hole into the other side of the plate, too.

Actually, those are seal welded overlapping surfaces, too. /me goes down to measure... < 100x50, probably 98x50-5x60 or something like that, eg ~4600 sq mm, under half of their threshold, so should be OK.

It could also probably do with another cross brace near the jockey wheel location, as the jockey wheel has a bit of spring to it right now. Which BTW, is this A-frame's new castor wheel for more convenient A-framing :-D Pics, copy/pasted from caravan thread:

Thinking just now... having the castor wheel on the front will make hitching up to the tow vehicle a trival task. Simply wind the A-frame up to the right height and drive it on using the towed vehicle. Once aligned, hop out and lower onto the ball! :-D

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